In all the talk of the supposed vulnerability of Aboriginal women in need of protection from the state, never forget the function it serves.

We must be rendered vulnerable and incapable of looking after ourselves for the simply reason we pose the greatest threat to the colony.

I still remember an old uncle saying to me ‘you gotta remember I come from a matriarchal society, we men arent as strong as you women’

It is the sovereign Black woman who cannot be sedated by suits and proximity to whiteness.

It is the sovereign Black woman who insists on care for all despite being despised every damn day in this place.

It is the bodies of sovereign Black women that represent the site of ongoing colonial violence and resistance.

The gaze has always been transfixed on our bodies - interrogating and violating it...from *Black velvet* to *nothing more than domesticated cows* stealing the children those bodies birthed, deemed incapable of caring or being cared for.

Yet as @amymcquire noted it is those same bodies that are on the frontline with megaphones in capital cities shutting them down.

And when they do, settlers say ‘what about the abused Aboriginal women and children?’

When the state abuses our kids the settlers say ‘what about the abused Aboriginal women’

When they want to suspend the race discrimination act to exercise more power over Black communities, the settlers again say ‘it’s for the abused Aboriginal women and children’

And don’t for a second think those programs that surveil Black mums & bubs are any less problematic - look at their focus - it’s always on her body and her behaviours and never includes intervening on the violence of the state upon her life. It is she who is to remedied.

It was not so long ago a family member had to seek assistance from police re DV. She escaped with her life & had to fight to be cared for. The police couldn’t work out why her children weren’t already *on the system* & assumed she had mispelt their names.

It is assumed in 2020 that the Aboriginal woman and her children are in the *care* of the state but how many coronial inquiries of Black women dying of preventable conditions in hospitals and police cells do we need to witness for this lie to stop?

The settlers *investment* in the bodies & behaviours of Aboriginal women & children is clear -we represent a Black future which they’ve long denied, a future where the words #alwayswasalwayswillbe will continue 2 ring through this land, refusing them of claims 2 what is ours.